Clarence Bouges

Clarence Bouges- A Mountain of a Man

Clarence Bouges was born in Engleheart, Ontario in 1909. Bouges spent much of his life residing in Dwight, Ontario just outside Algonquin park. He was a trapper and canoe builder and built cabins for Killarney Lodge in addition to working as a guide in the park. He is well known as a pioneer of canoe building in the Algonquin region and was popularized by the late Dan Gibson, a famous Canadian nature filmmaker. In addition to canoes, Clarence also made paddles, oars and even fiddles. That’s right! Fiddles! He also played the fiddle and the Banjo.

Clarence was known for making the finest snow shoes in the region. In fact, many locals would say that Clarence played a large part in shaping outdoor recreation in Algonquin and the surrounding area. Aside from his work, Clarence was a very interesting man. He had a pet one-winged raven that he would give beaver carcasses to. While in the shop, he would sometimes use cut up toothbrush pieces as inlays in his woodwork.

Clarence’s Canoes

What’s Cook Craft have to do with Clarence Bouges?

Curiously enough, 37 years after Clarence left this world Brian Cook was looking for a place to build canoes and found that Clarence’s old shop was vacant and available. And so, after some renovations and sprucing up, Clarence’s old canoe shop is now the home of COOK CRAFT where he does all his new builds and repairs.

Prior to moving into Clarences old shop, Brian had collected a few of Clarence’s old canoe molds. Some of these molds were, in turn, built before Clarence’s time, by a man named Victor Asbury who had a marina and worked on the shore of Dwight Bay in Lake of Bays. Victor built many canoes and rowboats during the first half of the 1900s. Truly there is a tradition of Canoe Building in the village of Dwight.